The pink-ball Test between India and England at the newly built Motera Stadium grabbed a lot of eyeballs as it was over within two days. India won the match by 10 wickets; thus taking a 2-1 lead in the four-match Test series and also went one step closer to reaching the ICC World Test Championship final scheduled to take place later this year.
Meanwhile, it was completely a spinner’s paradise as the pacers accounted for only one wicket out of the 30 that fell in the Test match. Axar Patel scalped 11 wickets while England skipper Joe Root returned with his first five-wicket haul.
England had won the toss and elected to bat first only to get bundled out for 112 runs. India took a crucial lead before bundling the visitors for 81 runs – this time even lower than the first innings. With 49 runs required to win, Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill took India home convincingly.
Here are some of the records that were broken during the pink-ball Test between India and England:
In the post-World War II era, the Ahmedabad Test was the shortest in terms of the total number of balls bowled at 842. Before this match, it was the India vs Bangladesh contest in Kolkata in 2019 that held the record (968 balls). Even the third place is held by a match featuring India. The sub-continent giants had wrapped-up a match against Afghanistan in 2018 in just 1028 balls.
Ravichandran Ashwin is now the second-fastest bowler to complete 400 wickets in the longest format of the game, after Sri Lanka’s legendary Muttiah Muralitharan. Murali had taken a total of 72 Tests in reaching the milestone while Ashwin did it in 77.
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The total runs scored in the Ahmedabad Test were 387 which is the lowest when it comes to a Test in Asia. The previous worst was 422 between Pakistan and Australia at Sharjah in 2002. Even England’s second innings total of 81 against India in the match was the second-worst by any visiting team in the country.
England only added a total of 193 runs before being bowled out twice on the same day. It is the first instance where a team was bundled out twice while aggregating less than 200 runs in the two innings.
The second innings of the match saw zero balls being bowled by seamers. Only the second instance for such a scenario.
England skipper Joe Root now holds the record of taking the most-economical 5-wicket haul in the history of Test cricket. He conceded only 8 runs en route to his fifer at the Narendra Modi Stadium.
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Axar Patel bagged 11 wickets in the match while giving away only 70 runs. He also registers his name in record books for the most economical 10-wicket match in the game. It was R Ashwin who previously held the record having claimed 12 wickets for 85 runs in a match against New Zealand in 2012.
